


EMP

by xxFeuerFrei



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Dorado, Established Relationship, Genji is fine, Jesse is chubby, M/M, Major Character Injury, Mentions of Gabe and Angela
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-29
Updated: 2016-11-29
Packaged: 2018-09-03 01:48:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8691721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xxFeuerFrei/pseuds/xxFeuerFrei
Summary: On a routine mission in Dorado, an EMP is launched by Talon. Jesse races through the streets to find his cyborg boyfriend.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in August before Sombra was announced. Seems like an EMP was an inevitable idea.

Talon had become increasingly anti-omnic. 

A fear-mongering terrorist organisation stirring contempt through social strife. It wasn’t a new concept. They’re different than us. They don’t eat, they don’t sleep. The oil their joints and charge their batteries. They can communicate without us listening. They have control over our resources. Few humans are still capable of understanding the electrical grid. The water supply. Omnics have taken over industries. The control the means of production. If something goes wrong, the humans blame them. The humans develop anti-omnic technologies. They make scopes to find omnic signatures and magnets to ruin their programming and they avoid the corner store with an omnic clerk.

Jesse Mccree lived through the omnic crisis. He remembers when the omnics in his neighbourhood flickered from blue to red. He remembers the fires and the chaos and the casualties. As the humans suffered, no one considered what it was like for the omnics. And Jesse didn’t, either. Not until he met a cyborg in Overwatch. 

Jesse McCree has been indebted to Overwatch for longer than he can remember. Gabriel pulled from the Deadlock gang by the scruff on his neck. They put his sharpshooting to use. They gave him a bed and three square meals a day. It’s more than Jesse had since his mother died. He was a wayward youth. He chipped his tooth while beating a man with a baseball bat. He aimed between the eyes and smoked smuggled cigars. He laughed when a man begged for his life. He didn’t deserve saving, and yet, Overwatch still saw something in him. 

And then Jesse met Genji. 

Genji Shimada was a playboy. Snorting cocaine off of collar bones and getting drunk at karaoke bars and dealing illegal rifles. He slept with his bodyguards and had a taste for vodka and funded his activities by flooding the streets with guns and drugs. Until he lost his body. 

Genji came to Overwatch broken. More broken than Jesse had ever seen. He didn’t want to be reconstructed. Dr. Ziegler brought him back from the brink of death. Overwatch saw him as an asset. The younger heir had been betrayed by his brother. They wanted whatever information he would give him, but he had to live first. 

It took six months for Genji to get out of bed. He met Jesse four months later. McCree remembers their first encounter vividly. It was late and he couldn’t sleep. He wandered down to the kitchen to look for beer. Whatever too dark German lager Reinhardt stocked. It was past three in the morning, and he didn’t expect anyone to be awake. But there was a light. A small, flickering green illumination. It was coming from Genji’s back. 

The cyborg was staring at a bowl of rice. Jesse grabbed a bottle and sat across from him at the hightop table. “Hungry?” Genji lifted his gaze and Jesse was met with a blank visor. God, what did Mercy do to him? 

“I don’t have a stomach,” a small voice crackled across a synthetic voice modulator. His accent was preserved. Japanese with a hint of yakuza. They sat in silence, Jesse finishing his beer and Genji pushing around rice in the bowl.

Their connection had been fast and intense. Genji liked to stand close, with his hands on Jesse’s forearms. He had the brightest laugh and he covered his mouth even when he wore his visor. When the helmet was off, when they were below the covers and sharing breath, his eyes were reflexive pools of grey. His smile crinkled them at the corners. 

Genji didn’t sleep and he didn’t eat but he was the most empathetic person Jesse had ever met. Sometimes, he was self-conscious. Genji was sharp angles and cool metal planes. He touched Jesse’s plush, tanned skin with envy. When they held hands, Jesse saw that he was uncomfortable. The cowboy walked to his other side and touched him with his prosthetic. Genji relaxed. 

Genji accompanied Jesse on grocery runs. He loved pressing his fingers into ripe fruit and crackling loaves and smelling different flavours of quiche. He made friends with the women who baked sweet bread and fresh pasta and stewed red sauces and rolitos and profiteroles. They would hand them their dishes and say calentita, nice and hot. He smiled and grabbed Jesse’s hand in excitement. He cradled a succulent to his heart as they walked home, as if it was the most precious thing in the world. Jesse had lived through the omnic crisis and he thought the prejudice was utter bullshit. 

The mission is routine. They are patrolling Dorado to combat Los Muertos. The gang continues to deal arms and attack omnics. LumériCo needs the city secured before they begin construction on their new power plants. They want Dorado to be as clean as Numbani. 

Jesse smokes a cigarette. He doesn’t always need a cigar to get his nicotine fix, and he doesn’t want to attract anymore attention. The spurs on his boots jingle as he walks. His free hand rests on his belt buckle. The serape around his shoulders makes him a scarlet beacon in the violet sky after dusk. 

The comms have gone quiet. Jesse, Genji, and Tracer have been deployed. It’s an unusual group. The city sprawl of Dorado makes mobility key. Pharah and Lucio are busy running missions with Reinhardt, so Genji and Lena are stuck with Jesse. He’s slow and lumbering. He can hold street level, but he can’t support them as Lena zips around corners and Genji climbs facades. Jesse strolls through the city. His teammates are out of sight. 

The blast is silent, but the ground shakes below Jesse’s feet. 

He looks up, flickering his cigarette to the asphalt. The street lights are out. In Dorado, the lights are run by LumériCo. Operated by omnics. What could have happened to make them all go offline? What created that tremor in the earth? The streets begin to flood with people. They’re looking around, in the twilight darkness, bathed in blue. There’s no power. There’s no light. Jesse touches the pads of his finger to the comm. It’s out. He has no way to contact Genji or Lena, and less of a chance to catch up to them. 

A small girl is carrying a robotic bird in her arms. She shushes the crowd furiously in her orange sundress, “Los omnics están durmiendo.” It hits him. It knocks the wind from his lungs. EMP. Electromagnetic pulse. A silent non-nuclear EMP was in development. High power microwaves would disrupt any electronic equipment. Omnics would go offline. Cyborgs would— 

He starts panicking. He takes a step forward, the motion making him aware of the deadweight below his elbow. He tries to bend his arm but the prosthetic is unresponsive. His neurotransmitter is dead. His arm hangs next to him. Dead, cold titanium. He keeps running. 

He doesn’t know where to look. The streets? Should he be checking the roof? Should he be looking for Tracer? Were they together? God, he wishes he was faster. He wishes he went on more of Genji’s morning jogs. He wishes he didn’t have that extra bit of weight around his middle. He climbs the stairs of a laundry mat. He needs a vantage point. Genji can be anywhere. He isn’t impended by heights or obstacles. God, what if someone found him already and— 

He’s looking for a green light until he remembers there won’t be one. Genji will be a shred of flesh in a lifeless suit. No vents exuding steam when he’s embarrassed, or the flickering lights on his chest and shoulders, the mischievous way he hangs from Jesse’s shoulders— 

He catches a glimpse of chrome, reflecting the light of the now visible moon.


End file.
